Dangerous Offenders with Personality Disorders: A Comparative Study of the Situation in Diverse Legal Systems, with Special Attention to Spain

Abstract

Since the dawn of the 21st century, the Western Hemisphere strategic defense outlook has been notably modified, due to new challenges and threats unknown or underestimated up until that moment. In this context, the adoption of preventive measures is imperative in order to guarantee the security over the territory and interests of Spain and the EU. The doctrinal concept of advanced frontier, although justified in certain cases with clear limitations, can never be used to legitimize covert cyber operations against critical infrastructure in sovereign states. An offender’s culpability versus the degree of danger he poses to society. This article explores the problem of dangerous criminals with personality disorders, for example sexual psychopaths, in the light of neuroscientific studies published in recent decades, in order to establish whether these individuals are liable or partially liable to prosecution—in other words, whether from a legal point of view they are fully responsible for their actions. Before this scientific advance, the violent acts perpetrated by these offenders were considered to be the product of their own free will. However, neuroscience has proven that there is nothing that cannot be explained in scientific terms, in accordance with the rules of causation. Therefore, neuroscientific studies will be useful to refine the relationship between certain disorders and the degree of immunity from prosecution; that is to say, advances in neuroscience have diluted the difference between someone who can be held responsible and someone who cannot. However, this possible mitigation of the sentence sits uneasily with the risk that these subjects pose to society, and so the sentence must be supplemented with a post-incarceration security measure aimed at special prevention. This article presents an overview of the security measures applied to dangerous individuals implemented in a variety of countries, and then pays special attention to Spanish criminal legislation.